A smile came across the face of Susie Mettler as she gingerly lifted her hand and presented umpire Ted Galuschik with the lineup card.
It’s Senior Night at Perry. But it’s not the Senior Night Mettler dreamed of or hoped for prior to the start of her senior year.
The events of Dec. 15, 2013 altered the season, and her life, forever.

That was the day Mettler was seriously injured in a sledding accident, leaving her with five breaks in her neck and a severely damaged spinal cord.
Susie Mettler’s senior season was supposed to be special, as she and her twin sister Jenny planned on being the primary power sources as the corner infielders for the Perry softball team.
The girls were planning on playing softball together at Lakeland Community College, and Susie anxiously anticipated her mother’s career path as a nuclear power plant operator.
But a friendly day of sledding changed that.
Now confined to a wheelchair as a C-6 quadriplegic — which means she has impairment in all four limbs — Mettler’s goals of college softball and nuclear operations have been altered significantly.
But she vows to face them with a smile, whether or not she ever walks again.
“I really hope I will (walk again),” she said. “But if I don’t, I’ll do (life) with a smile on my face from my wheelchair. They told me so many times I wouldn’t make it — but I’m still here.
“I’m still me. I’ll be all right.”Life-altering ride
Snow whipped the face of Mettler as she and good friend Morgan Jury started their descent down a slope at River View Park in Madison nicknamed, “Suicide Hill,” by the local sled-riders.
As the girls’ sled increased its speed, the punishing snow in their faces became too much to bear, so each of them bowed their heads to protect their stinging faces.
To that point, it had been a pretty rough day for the Perry softballers, by all accounts, The Pirates had just finished some indoor-league games at their school. Mettler said there was some bickering going on during the games, but the silver lining was the sledding trip a group of the girls had been planning for a number of days.
“I look back at the tweets that day and they were all, ‘I wanna go sledding,’ ” Mettler recalled. “We wanted to go sledding the whole week. That’s what you do in the winter time up here. You go sledding and have fun.”
But getting pelted in the face with snow pellets wasn’t fun, so Mettler and Jury dipped their heads to avoid the sting. They never saw what was coming, though those at the top of the hill — like twin sister Jenny — did.
“I saw them going down the hill, then they started to veer,” said Jenny Mettler, who is 29 minutes younger than her twin.
The howling wind, not to mention the distance between them, made yelling a warning a worthless endeavor.
If only she could alter the course of her sister and her friend, who were on a high-speed collision course with a tree — with their heads down.
Eyes opened wide and onlookers flinched as the two teenagers hit the tree head-on.
“I didn’t even look up. Neither of us did,” Jury said. “I remember the top of my head hit the sled and I flipped and landed on my back facing the opposite way. I wasn’t really sure what happened, but I panicked.”
As did Jenny, who along with others began running down the hill to the scene of the accident.
“Morgan flew off to the side in some brush,” Jenny said. “I kept waiting for them to get up. Then someone down there started yelling, ‘Call 9-1-1.’ ”Harsh reality
Shaken by the collision, Jury called out to her injured friend.
While Jury had been cast off to the side, avoiding the blunt trauma from the tree, Susie absorbed a head-on hit.
“I could hear her crying and screaming,” said Jury, her voice trailing off as she recalled the moment immediately after the accident.
“Her head was split open,” Jenny said. “There was blood everywhere.”
But that wasn’t the worst of it — by far.
Jenny immediately called her mother, Tina, who in turn called father Chuck. At that point, no one knew the severity of the accident.
Said Tina, “I didn’t think anything of it. They’ve gotten hurt before. They’ve broken things.”
Since he was the person coaching the indoor game, Chuck was nearby and got to the hospital before the ambulance did.
What he heard — even before his daughter’s arrival — gave him chills.
“I heard them call for the life-flight choppers,” Chuck said. “Right then, I knew it was pretty bad.”
The damage, revealed by doctor’s at MetroHealth in Cleveland, was extensive, including fractures to the C1, C2, C6 and C7 vertebrae, as well as the T4 in her neck.
“The C7 was destroyed,” Chuck said. “It was removed, that’s how much damage was done to it.
“The (spinal cord) wasn’t severed, but it was just smashed.”
Surgeries on consecutive days allowed doctors to clean up what they could. The first, the family said, got as many bone fragments as possible out of the spinal cord, while the second the next day took eight hours to insert 21 screws, two rods, two plates and a ‘cage’ where doctors put bone fragments together to stabilize the area where the C7 had been destroyed and removed.
“And she had two collapsed lungs,” Chuck said. “It was pretty bad.”
All the while, through the pain and fear, the first signs of strength were shown by Susie herself.
“Yeah, they cut off my bibs,” Susie said, thinking more about her clothing than her bodily well-being. “I was (ticked). The only thing they saved were my camouflage muck boots.”Time to make lemonade
Whenever things have gotten tough in the Mettler household, Chuck has always theorized, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
This, Chuck said, was lemonade time.
“It’s not unfair,” he said. “This is the way the ball bounces some days.”
Despite four surgeries, Susie was left without use of her legs. She has most of her shoulder movement on her right side, has bicep movement and some tricep movement and can move her wrist. On her left side, there is shoulder and bicep movement, but only slight wrist movement.
“Things might come back. They might not,” Susie said. “It’s different with everyone. So far nothing works, my legs don’t work or my hands.”
To some, the circumstances would present a reason to quit.
Susie Mettler isn’t familiar with the word “quit.”
She returned to school at Perry. And while she admits frustration when she is unable to write as fast as other students when problems are being drawn out on the board, she’s more than making due.
“I like being back here,” she said, glancing over at Perry High School. “All my friends are here.”
At home, with the help of her motorized wheelchair, she is a regular in the barn where her family keeps their animals. When she is not feeding Pop-Tarts to her shorthorn named “Hebber,” she’s keeping tabs on others in charge of chores.
“She yells at us that her barn isn’t clean enough,” Chuck said with a laugh.
Oh yes, life has gone on. Maybe not the way Susie anticipated it doing so, but it has gone on.
“ ‘Dad, I can do it myself’ ” Chuck said, mimicking his daughter’s voice. “I hear that 100 times a day. She has no trunk movement below her armpits, but she is determined to do things herself.”Community rises up
The outpouring of support has been extraordinary, the family said.
Listing everyone who has aided the Mettlers, either financially through fundraisers or through support, is an endless litany.
“We didn’t know how many friends we had until now,” Tina said, her eyes welling up with tears.
A 4-H benefit was held in Susie’s name, which raised the needed funds for a van accessible for her wheelchair.
Within recent weeks, a manual wheelchair was purchased so Susie can work on her arms by pushing the wheels herself.
Additionally, Susie is enrolled in the WAGS 4 Kids program, a program dedicated to training and placing mobility service and skilled companion animals for children with disabilities in Northeast Ohio.
Both parents rave of the support from the community, as well as from those underneath their own roof.
“Jenny is amazing the way she takes care of Susie,” Tina said. “We actually fight over who takes care of her. We have a great family, and the community has been wonderful.”A bright future
Despite all the misfortune stemming from Dec. 15, 2013, Susie is excited about her future.
While she is finishing up her high school days at Perry, both serving as a captain for the softball team and taking care of duties in the classroom, her eye is on a future many might deem dim.
But she doesn’t.
“I’m going to college and am thinking about motivational speaking,” Susie said, “talking to people about stuff like I am going through.”
And if you think her athletic days are over, you might want to reconsider. With the help of physical therapy, she is dreaming big.
“I definitely want to play quadriplegic rugby,” she said. “Hopefully I can train for the Olympics and stuff like that. I’m excited about it.”
There are plenty of frustrating moments for Susie Mettler. Brushing her teeth takes two hands, simple tasks such as grasping a single Cheese Nip from a bowl is cumbersome, and nothing bothers her more than someone who stares at her because she is in a wheelchair.
But for every frustration, there is a reason for hope — and smiles — whether it’s a day with friends at home or overheating the engine on her mobile wheelchair as she did last week while pulling a wagon with her sister in tow as both laughed themselves to tears.
Dec. 15, 2013 changed Susie Mettler’s life forever. It just didn’t provide anywhere near enough reason for her to quit on herself.
“We did so much crazy stuff, my friends and I, and it’s only going to get worse,” she promised. “If I would have died that day ... I lived a crazy life. I did everything I wanted to do. I didn’t miss out on anything.
“I’m definitely not going to miss out on anything now because I’m in a wheelchair. This isn’t going to stop me from doing anything. I’ll be fine.”